Albert Eschenmoser

33rd Paul Karrer Lecture 2008

Aula der Universität Zürich

Naturstoffstrukturen hinterfragen

Albert Eschenmoser has been Professor Emeritus at ETH Zurich since 1992.
He was born in Erstfeld (Uri), Switzerland, on August 5, 1925
and received his Dipl.sc.nat. in 1949 and his D.Sci. in 1951 from the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), where he became private
lecturer in Organic Chemistry in 1956, associate professor in 1960, and
full professor for General Organic Chemistry in 1965.
In his research in organic and bioorganic chemistry, Eschenmoser
has made contributions to theory of terpene biosynthesis, structure
elucidation of natural products, stereochemistry and mechanism of
organochemical and biochemical reactions, development of new methods for
organic synthesis, total synthesis of complex natural products and
chemical etiology of nucleic acid structure.
Eschenmoser is a member of the German Academy Leopoldina (Halle),
Academia Europaea (UK) and the Pontifical Academy (Vatican), a foreign
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the
National Academy of Sciences (Washington), the Royal Society (UK), the
Academy of Science in Göttingen, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and
Arts (Zagreb), the orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste
(Berlin), and the Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und
Kunst (Wien), he is a honorary member of the Royal Society of Chemistry
(London), Gesellschaft Österreichischer Chemiker (Wien), and the
Pharmaceutical Society of Japan. He holds honorary degrees from the
Universities of Fribourg, Chicago, Edinburgh, Bologna, Frankfurt,
Strasbourg, Harvard, and from The Scripps Research Institute.